Hi,

First post here. I am curious about building an electrostat HPA as I only have an SRD7 Mk2. I am interested in some of Kevin Gilmore's designs like the KGSSHV variants and the T2, but the legend about the KGSSHV seems to ring true that it is hard to build and hard to learn about. Is there somewhere I can read about these different designs in white paper format like Nelson Pass does with the First Watt amps? I can't even find schematics or a BOM. It's truly a nightmare, and I don't want to endlessly bother spritzer with questions. Frankly, I am not totally sure of the "authorship" of each of these amps which makes it harder to research.

I was considering first building a Nectar Agave since it could probably be finished between semesters, and it has a clear BOM, PCB files and a cost estimate- where as the KGSSHV line is known to be good quality but near impossible to read about.

I don't expect to understand everything, just hoping to understand more what makes each design unique and uniquely capable at driving an electrostat to decide what to build.

Thanks in advance for any pointers of where to read about them.

Check the Do It Yourself thread. There aren't any white papers or build guides available. There are gerbers for the boards (check the Stax thread for the location for board files and for schematics), and you should be able to find BOMs, etc. though it might take quite a bit of reading and effort. The board search works well for that (searching a thread).

It's been a while but I just wanted to say thanks.

I am considering Spritzer's KGSSHV kit but a ton of the kit-excluded silicon parts are discontinued. Other things came up and slowed me down, now I am considering newer options like the carbon and maybe CFA-E, although the carbon has similar issues with part sourcing now it seems. 

Either way, this community seems to be the right place to look given the amount of documentation and focus on objective performance.

On 6/27/2025 at 6:42 AM, Pubert Peepis said:

It's been a while but I just wanted to say thanks.

I am considering Spritzer's KGSSHV kit but a ton of the kit-excluded silicon parts are discontinued. Other things came up and slowed me down, now I am considering newer options like the carbon and maybe CFA-E, although the carbon has similar issues with part sourcing now it seems. 

Either way, this community seems to be the right place to look given the amount of documentation and focus on objective performance.

In what part of the world are you?